“Daraaaaaaa?” Logan called from the hallway, drawing out his roommate’s name intentionally.

“Whaaaaaaat?” She replied, poking her head out of her room and looking rather energetic despite it being in the middle of fall.

Gesturing to the thermostat on the wall, the human took on an uncharacteristically serious expression. “Dara, why is the heat set to eighty degrees?”

Her expression quickly became the picture of pure innocence. “It was starting to get cold and I can’t keep myself warm like you do.”

“Dara…”

“Nobles back home would kill to have their homes this warm year-round!”

“Dara…”

“Please don’t be upset-”

“Dara. I am not upset,” Logan finally interrupted her. “We have these things called heated blankets that will keep you warm and not kill my wallet.” He gestured to the hall closet while using his other hand to pointedly turn the heat way down.

Taking the hint, Dara quickly padded over to the closet and opened it, revealing a rather tidy assortment of blankets and towels. But upon looking a little closer, she found the ‘heating blankets’ her roommate was talking about.

With her prize in hand she quickly retreated all while Logan’s serious expression seemed to become more wooden and stiff. Rather than ponder whatever performance he was putting on, Dara returned to her room and quickly began the process of learning how the blanket worked.

The moment she discovered the highest heat setting was perhaps the single greatest moment in her life after learning she could have a hot shower on demand of course.

____________________________________________________________________________

Later that evening Logan found himself knocking at Dara’s door to let her know dinner was ready. The door slowly drifted ajar after the second or third knock, revealing a scene that he would treasure for the rest of his life.

Wrapped up in a veritable hill of blankets, with a heated outer core, was Dara. The only visible parts of her were her horns and the very end of her snout, the latter of which was letting out an ever so adorable snore.

Chuckling lightly, Logan went back to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a small plate. Waving the still steaming burger in front of the blanket hill, he was treated to quite the show as consciousness returned to the blissful dragonette.

“Food…” she slurred happily, her snout twitching this way and that to follow the plate.

He struggled to suppress his laughter and wound up shaking the plate such that Dara began to track even that motion. This rather hilarious feedback loop carried on for a good few seconds before the hill of blankets began to unravel.

“So, how nice are those heated blankets?” Logan asked with a calmness that did not match his massive smirk.

“They’re amazing!” his roommate replied happily, stretching languidly as she shed all but the innermost layers in order to reach for her food.

Still chuckling, he gave her the plate and swiped one of her redbull cans off the desk. “Heh, I’m glad you’re enjoying them. Say, you remember how you said you were looking for some new games to try?”

Dara nodded as she ate, her eyes narrowing in suspicion at what the human was up to this time. He had been rather nice this evening, too nice almost.

“Well, there’s a sale going on and I picked up some games I think you might enjoy.”

Narrowing her eyes even further, she took in his mischievous smile and felt a sliver of cold run down her spine and tail. “What’d you get?”

“I shan’t ruin the surprise, Dara. Some of these games are all the better by going into them blind- proverbially blind, not actually blind.” He rushed to clarify at her concerned expression.

She nodded along, weighing her options and the goodwill he had earned with the heating blankets, and tasty food. “Fine, let me finish eating first.”

“Yes! You won’t regret this one bit.” His reassurance had all the glee of a demon ready for its next victim.

“Kalador save me from this crazy human,” she muttered before taking another bite of her cheeseburger. Of course, this caused her to immediately praise humans the world over for their culinary inventiveness.

____________________________________________________________________________

Swaddled once more in her gloriously warm blankets, Dara sat before the human’s computer booting up some game called ‘Subnautica’. Her mastery of English wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to grasp some context clues.

The opening menu being an image of hell itself was just the sugar on top of her rapidly mounting realization, ‘I am going to kill that human.’

Alas, a deal was a deal and she had enough honor to see this through no matter how uncomfortable it might be, or how inventive Logan was with his trickery.

Sighing deeply, she selected the new game option and immediately regretted the decision to follow her honor.

Warning sirens and explosions boomed out as her character escaped from some titanic detonation above. The escape craft screamed down through the sky with all the speed and grace of a doomed dragon, causing pieces to break off and knock her out.

Barely a moment passed before she was greeted by a wall of fire within the pod as consciousness returned. Acting quickly, and following a hint or two, she quickly put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher.

Satisfied at having survived the introduction, she exited the pod to survey the surrounding area. To say she regretted it would have been an understatement as her entire field of view was filled with nothing but ocean, churning waves and not a bit of land to be seen.

“Oh…no…” she muttered after realizing what her next objective was.

Dive feet first into the depths of hell itself.

The comforting embrace of her heated blankets acted as a shield as she sent her character under the waves.

Over the span of several minutes, the fear slowly bled away as she settled into the gameplay. Soon enough, she found herself struggling to remain fearful of the watery depths as the inherent beauty of the environment amazed her.

Collecting scrap and slowly building up her base was a rather satisfying experience all things considered. Though Dara would never admit it aloud, she found herself rather liking the calm atmosphere of the game as she explored.

“Warning: Entering ecological deadzone.” The warning sounded out as she began to reach the edge of the map. A ghostly screech soon followed, putting far more weight to the warning.

Dara’s previous bravery flew away from her entirely as a massive, terrifying demon worthy of legends rapidly approached her.

“Oh fuck fuck fuck FUCK!!!”

____________________________________________________________________________

After calming down, and cursing Logan’s entire bloodline, she began to ponder the merits of simply ignoring the other games he had gotten. Unfortunately, honor won out yet again, aided in part by the hope that they might have the same beauty and peace that Subnautica had shown her.

The next game didn’t exactly leave her much hope given its title of ‘Dead Space’, but Dara gave it a shot anyways.

“Damn it,” she cursed as she accidentally selected the continue option. Though this caused her to blink in confusion as this was her first time playing it. How could there already be a game in progress?

The game quickly loaded into a metal hallway, her character clad in some sort of suit of armor and wielding an odd looking gun. Shrugging her wings, Dara began familiarizing herself with the controls.

“Where are all the enemies?” she wondered aloud as she continued on down the hallway.

Unfortunately, her question quickly received an answer in the form of a massive fleshy tentacle emerging from around a corner.

“What the-” She barely had time to react before it attacked and began dragging her along.

Panicking, her shots went wide as she tried to save herself from this monster. What few shots that did land seemed to hurt the creature, but it wasn’t enough to save her as the tentacle crushed her and ripped her corpse apart in fury.

Her next few attempts did little to diminish the fright the monster gave her, but it did improve her accuracy somewhat until she finally managed to defeat it.

“That’s enough of that,” she spat at the frankly unfair, in her mind at least, encounter.

As she exited the game, her heart quickly sank as the list of new games reappeared. This was only the first game in the series.

There were still two more for her to try.

“Kalador give me strength,” she muttered in prayer before entering the next one.

The second Dead Space had her loading into yet another metal hallway that opened into some sort of atrium. Chunks of flesh and debris covered the floor in piles, providing plenty of hiding spots. She cautiously approached the area, eyes on the lookout for any other monstrous tentacles or worse.

What greeted her however, was something altogether more unnerving.

A bone white creature peered around the corner, observing her approach before giving an animalistic call that was quickly answered by many, many more.

Barely controlling her rising panic, she managed to land a few shots on the creature, knocking it away and back behind cover…right as she saw another charging her. There wasn’t enough time to react as it bowled her over, and even more appeared, quickly tearing her apart.

“Who’s idea of fun is this?” she questioned somewhat shakily as she left the game and started up the last one.

The third and final game loaded her into a small antechamber of some sort. Dread quickly filled her as she noticed signs of frost and ice along the edges of the door.

Hesitantly, she opened them to reveal a barren, frozen wasteland beyond. Her character was talking to someone over the radio, but the words didn’t really register to Dara as she finally noped out of the game.

Clearly, the games’ creators were sadists and wanted nothing more than to punish their players with horrific creatures and hell itself.

Shaking her head at the nonsense, she began to wonder if Logan had planned all of this. Knowing that human’s antics…the odds were all but certain.

Cursing him, and her continued adherence to honor, she opened the next and final game.

Surprisingly enough, there were no saves to be loaded and she selected the new game option. The introduction was somewhat confusing to her, but easy enough to get the gist of: A daughter searching for her lost mother.

Dara truly hoped the game would be more merciful than the others.

Her hopes were slowly dashed as a subtle wrongness permeated the station she was on, every noise setting her on edge, every shadow ready to conceal an enemy.

Gritting her teeth and curling even tighter into her blankets, she did her best to follow her objectives without giving into her fear.

Such was her concentration that she failed to notice a steady light on the microphone next to the computer.

Eventually, she found herself overriding a security lock to progress further…and that subtle wrongness finally manifested itself.

A creature of pure corruption descended from the ceiling, stealing her breath away as raw animalistic fear made her heart pound. The sheer wrongness of the monster triggered every instinct within her to run, to fly, to do something to get away from it.

Wrapped up as she was in the blankets, she could only struggle in vain as the cutscene played out. The uncanny nature of the creature only grew as more of it came into view, its spindly limbs and tubular projections off its back were unlike anything she had ever seen.

After an eternity of torture, the cutscene ended with the monster skulking off, leaving her still trapped within her shield of heated blankets.

Minutes slowly passed as reason began to win out over hardwired instincts.

Taking long and deep breaths, Dara eventually regained enough composure to retake the controls. At this point, honor no longer compelled her to continue the game.

Nor was it a desire to overcome such a horrific enemy as the game likely intended.

No, she was going to overcome her fear to spite whatever mischief Logan had laid out for her.

She continued further into the station, caution ruling her every action as she hoped the monster wasn’t especially intelligent.

The faint thump of footsteps and a heartstopping hiss were her only warning to hide as the monster reappeared. A nearby desk soon found its underside occupied by Dara as she watched the thing begin looking for her, ducking down and checking beneath other desks.

All the stress and fear had caused her guts to churn, both figuratively and literally. This had some rather unfortunate consequences for the dragonette.

A brief passing of the wind escaped her, something so small and quiet it was hardly audible. But, in the absolute quiet of her fear, with no other sounds to obscure it?

The monster turned and looked. Right. At. Her.

Dara learned right there that it was indeed possible to feel even greater levels of fear than before as she froze.

Its nightmarish form charged her, its jaw unhinging to reveal another maw and…the game over screen couldn’t come quickly enough for her.

Long minutes passed as Dara sat there, her faith in the gods renewed by an encounter with something more terrifying than any darkling or shadow drake. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real, or that someone had thought it up and made a game about it.

Hell surely held monsters just as terrifying or worse.

As she sat there, praying, and reaffirming her religious fervor, exhaustion quickly caught up to her from her many scares. Yet sleep remained elusive as every mysterious and unsettling sound had her ears standing straight up, searching.

Not even the warmth of her shielding blankets were enough to guard her from her own paranoia. It was going to be a long night…

____________________________________________________________________________

Smack!

“Ow.”

Smack!

“Ow.”

Smack!

“Could you not?” Logan complained in between his roommate slugging him in the shoulder.

The angry look Dara gave him was followed by another rather well aimed hit, though it did little to impede him preparing breakfast for the two of them. His litany of apologies that morning had been rather impressive given how traumatized the poor dragonette had been, and as such, a peace offering was required.

“One.”

Smack!

“Stack.”

Smack!

“Of pancakes for you…are you done hitting me?” the human questioned, though the near openly salivating dragonette beside him was answer enough.

“Gimme gimme gimme!” she pleaded, making grabbing motions at the plate of soon-to-be sugar covered goodness.

“What’s the magic word?”

“…”

“How many English classes have you had?”

Dara tilted her head in thought, her eyes still locked on the plate’s contents. “More than enough to get by and understand you.”

“But not enough to know the magic word?”

“…no.”

Taking pity on the poor dragonette, Logan lowered the plate into her hands. “It’s ‘please’, and using it will help you go a lot further than not.”

“Please,” the word had barely left her mouth by the time she made it to the table and began liberally pouring maple syrup all over the stack. Logan simply chuckled at the display as he grabbed his own plate of food.

“So, how’d you enjoy your new games?” he asked all too innocently right as Dara took a bite of her syrup-soaked pancake.

Pure bliss warred with anger and betrayal, making for quite the spectacle as her expression twisted about. Eventually, bliss won out, but only just. “You’re godsdamn lucky you know how to cook so well.”

“I am a man of many talents after all, and quality taste for games.” He laughed at the dirty look she shot him in return. “I shall endeavor to make it up to you somehow.”

Her eyes settled on him rather pointedly, her food no longer holding her attention. “I might have a few ideas since it’s been so cold out and so very very frightening.”

Logan’s eyebrows furrowed in momentary confusion until he felt her tail curl around his feet. That was when the proverbial light bulb lit up. “Oh… Oh!”